Advance GDP estimates will be released on Jan 7

November 17, 2016 — INDOLINK Consulting (es)

Source: The Economic Times, Nov 17, 2016

NEW DELHI: The Central Statistics Office will release the first advance estimates of economic growth for the current financial year on January 7 to help the government prepare the Budget, which has been brought forward by about a month to February 1.

The advance gross domestic product (GDP) numbers are needed to arrive at estimates of the fiscal deficit and revenue for the next year, assuming a reasonable growth rate. Previously, the data was released around February 7, almost three weeks before the Budget.

“It has been decided to release first advance estimates of GDP on January 7 or previous working day if January 7 is a holiday, two months and 24 days before the end of a financial year,” the statistics office said.

The office will now squeeze in the second advance estimates for the current financial year along with the third-quarter data on February 28 or on the last working day of February. Last month, chief statistician TCA Anant told ET that the since the inventory of data collection is currently done for a release to be made on February 7, a separate inventory will have to be made for an earlier release.

Moreover, to get a more accurate estimate of growth, the CSO will use of figures from the Annual Survey of Industries instead of data from the Index of Industrial Production for the manufacturing sector. This data set would be “based on actual expenditure figures available from the central and state government budgets, improved coverage of accounts of public and private corporations and autonomous bodies and local bodies.”

The IIP is still calculated on a base of 2004-05 while the national accounts have shifted to 2011-12 base.